


Currents

by Deepdarkwaters



Series: Bespoke [20]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Bath Sex, Bathing/Washing, Fluff, Injury, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Polyamory, Sex Work, Sleepy Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-21 14:29:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12459714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: "So," Harry said when he rolled up his shirt sleeve to let Merlin inject the replacement implant. "Is that a spare one in case I get my arm bashed in again, or are you trying to find the courage to offer it to a certain someone else?"Merlin glanced at the second copy he'd made, sitting on his desk in a shiny steel case that in some other universe might be a ludicrous velvet ring box. "Haven't decided yet.""Yes you have," Harry said with a full-force, brilliant smile.





	1. Chapter 1

There's barely any sound announcing the intruder, only the gentle thud of feet on the bedroom floorboards and then the click-squeak of the turning doorhandle. Harry feels a pang of irritation at being disturbed, like always, but when he turns his head he finds Eggsy in the doorway with a sleepy grin and tousled hair, his tie vanished somewhere and the top few buttons of his shirt unfastened, and the effort to stop his own idiotic smile from spreading would be far too much for this hour of the night.

"Merlin warned me you get tetchy about your sacred bathtime," Eggsy says, "but I reminded him you're obsessed with me and you ain't gonna tell me to fuck off. There's a tenner riding on this. Up to you."

"Split it with me and you can come in."

"Fucking bargain." He leaves the door half-open and drops to his knees at the side of the bath, leaning over the edge to press a lingering kiss to Harry's damp cheek. "Rough mission?"

"Fairly routine. A little more roundhouse kicking and neck snapping than I like these days." Harry lifts his hand out of the steaming water and Eggsy immediately starts making fussy noises over the grazes on his knuckles, wrapping his fingers tightly around Harry's wrist and kissing all the sore places carefully as though there's some kind of marvellous magic in his mouth - which there is, of course, just not the kind that's going to help in any practical way here. Harry still welcomes it, the renewed throb of pain across his knuckles contrasting with the soft touch of Eggsy's lips and how much care he's taking. He's sleepy from the hot water and the heap of scented bubbles, bone-weary from thirty hours awake and a literal fight for his life, and reasonably sure he's not going to be in any worthwhile state tonight to do anything much about this lazy curl of arousal flickering to life in his belly. "Darling," he starts to explain, but Eggsy shushes him, turning his hand over to kiss his palm and close his fingers around it like Wendy's thimble.

"Fall asleep in the bath if you want," he says, as though Harry's unspoken thoughts all seeped through to him by osmosis anyway. "You won't drown. I'll look after you."

Harry can't help a smile, knowing it must be one of his giddy, foolish, toothy ones but not caring. "Five minutes' ration of luxuriating, wash, bed. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to my bed."

"Thought you might. I put fresh linens on specially. It's all rustly and cool, all nice crisp corners on the sheet and your horrible crochet bedspread. And I laid your blue silk jamas out, unless you fancy sleeping in the buff."

Harry's happy moan is exaggerated to make Eggsy laugh, but not by very much; the minute of getting to lie naked and spreadeagled in a freshly-made bed before the others come and shove him along to get in beside him is one of the top three pleasures of his whole life. "You spoil me."

"Yeah, well, you deserve spoiling." Harry's eyes are closed but he senses motion beside him, hears the drip and splash of water, then feels the gentle scrape of the soapy sponge glide across his chest to follow the path of both collarbones and back again, slow little circles against his hot skin. It makes him shiver, a rush of goosebumps thrilling the back of his neck when Eggsy dips the sponge again and retraces the path to rinse away the soap. "Arm," he says softly, cleaning from shoulder to fingertips when Harry raises it, leaning over him to do the same with the other. Harry looks up through his eyelashes for that, letting the sight of Eggsy's expression imprint itself on his brain alongside countless millions of others: the sleepy softness in his eyes; the way his pink lower lip is pinched white at the spot where it's caught between his teeth in concentration; the golden flecks of stubble on his cheeks and chin, glinting in the candlelight. _Looks like a fucking Bonnie Tyler video in here_ Eggsy teased the first time he invaded Harry's bathtime, and dodged giggling out of the room when Harry grumpily splashed water at him.

"I would die a hundred times for you," Harry murmurs, feeling extravagantly sentimental the way he so often does when he's got Eggsy's face this close to his own. He leans up to kiss him but his aim is clumsy and his lips land on Eggsy's cheek, right on the bullseye of the dimple that appears when he smiles, like he's doing now: after all this time and endless repetitions, he still seems surprised and delighted to be on the receiving end of some tiny heartfelt gesture or word.

"That's nice, but don't you fucking dare even once. Sit up, lemme get your back." He helps Harry lean forward, forearms braced against his knees, then soaks the sponge again and presses it to his nape to send a sheet of hot water cascading down his back, over the lingering bruises and scabbed welts from the whip last week. "These still hurt?" Eggsy asks, quiet as though he's trying to hide another apology between his words.

"Not enough to be bothersome. Enough that I remember you every time I move."

"Alright." He's careful, tenderly dabbing at all the sore places then easing Harry back to lie against his bath pillow again. He stays silent through soaping and rinsing Harry's legs and feet, then laughingly says, "Thought you said you was tired?" when he dunks the sponge through the bubbles and water again and finds Harry's cock half-hard. "Pretty sure giving this thing a good scrub's only gonna make it dirtier."

"You needn't bother," Harry tells him, "I'll only fall asleep halfway through and hurt your feelings." But Eggsy makes a dismissive noise in his throat and abandons the sponge somewhere by Harry's knees so he can curl his fingers around his half-full cock and coax it to life, and when Harry comes with a quivering shout ten minutes later he splashes half the bathwater over the side, drenching the floor and turning Eggsy's shirt translucent.

"Challenge accepted," Eggsy says belatedly, brilliant smile making his eyes shine in the candlelight as he's swishing the come off his hand in the cooling bathwater between Harry's shaking legs. "Come on, get up now. Bedtime for sleepy spies."

Harry barely remembers getting from the bath to the bedroom, though he recalls vague, dazed sense-memories in the morning: Eggsy drying him off with a giant fluffy towel; the cool crispness of clean cotton sheets against the healing skin of his back; Eggsy kissing his nose and whispering nonsense to him as he's drifting off; and the creak and bounce of bedsprings when he half-wakes in the night, Eggsy's blissful face in the blue moonlight and Merlin spooning him from behind, fucking between his thighs with his come-splashed fingers still wrapped possessively, reverently, around Eggsy's spent cock.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do I look like Merlin?" He reaches for Merlin's glasses on the coffee table and slips them on, and when he speaks next it's with a Scottish accent that's uncannily close to Merlin's own, not the gleeful caricature he sometimes puts on when he's joking around. "Galahad, you're late. In you go. Meeting's started."
> 
> It makes Harry laugh, startled and delighted. "Good god, you're not bad at this."

"It's cooold," Eggsy whines for at least the fourth time this evening, and for the fourth time Harry starts fussing like a grandmother, offering to bring him tea or whisky or another pair of socks. Merlin's watching them over the top edge of his book, suspicion narrowing his eyes just slightly until - there it is, the twitch on Eggsy's pretty mouth showing how hard he's trying not to smile.

"Stop spoiling your puppies," Merlin tells Harry, "they get accustomed to it then they're impossible to manage," and Harry defiantly says, "No," and goes back to rubbing Eggsy's fingers, holding them to his mouth to breathe hotly on the tips and kissing him there.

"If you think about it," Eggsy says, tipping his head back on the sofa arm to gift Merlin an upside-down cheeky dimpled grin, "technically I'm spoiling _him_. Dirty old bastards get off on all this, hey. Playing the big strong hero for some pathetic damsel."

"You don't think he's got all kinds of ulterior motives? He'll have you stuffed in the bathroom the second you let your guard down."

"He can stuff me anywhere he wants." Eggsy says it with his pointed eyebrows lasciviously raised and laughter glimmering in his eyes, but there's a guardedness about him too; it's not been three weeks yet since he sat there at the seaside physically trembling under Merlin's steady arm, and he's still not made any attempt to talk about why he was so upset. Maybe tonight is the night. Maybe they'll have to be patient and let him sort out the muddle in his head a while longer. Either way, a rare night with all three of them home at once is something to treasure, and Merlin's in no mood to rock the boat when he could just sit here with a glass of his favourite Macallan and watch the other two chatter and cuddle as if they still can't get enough of either.

"Here," Merlin says, throwing his discarded jumper across the coffee table.

Eggsy's too distracted by Harry's mouth on his fingers to catch it, and cracks up laughing when it flops right over his face. "Thanks," he says, disentangling the arms and pulling it over his head. It's too long for him in the body and sleeves, and the bulk of his chest and biceps are stretching the wool a fraction tighter than Merlin really likes, but it's absolutely a worthwhile sacrifice to see Harry's eyes go all pathetically liquid and warm. He leans closer, shamelessly inhaling the mingled scents of Eggsy's neck and Merlin's jumper, and without looking at what he's doing he begins to turn up the cuffs that are hanging over Eggsy's hands.

"Suits you," Harry murmurs between kisses. Eggsy's smile is borderline beatific, an expression he wore clumsily when he first fell into their lives but now fits as though it were tailored for him, and he tilts his head to give Harry more neck to get his lips on.

"Yeah, right, you'd say that if I had a binbag on."

"And it would be no less true."

"Do I look like Merlin?" He reaches for Merlin's glasses on the coffee table and slips them on, and when he speaks next it's with a Scottish accent that's uncannily close to Merlin's own, not the gleeful caricature he sometimes puts on when he's joking around. "Galahad, you're late. In you go. Meeting's started."

It makes Harry laugh, startled and delighted. "Good god, you're not bad at this."

Eggsy's always had a talent for mimicry, Merlin's seen it fifty times on various missions, but having it turned _on him_ is new, and it's unsettling in a strange, backwards sort of way that he wants to take apart and inspect, not stop. He rarely feels arousal in any real physical way, even watching all the things Eggsy and Harry do together, but he can feel it begin to simmer in him now even though it seems laughably arrogant to be turned on by an impression of himself. There's more to it than that. Merlin turns it over in his mind for a minute, watching the besotted starving look in Harry's eyes and the way Eggsy manages to keep up his act even when Harry's impatient hand slips under the bottom hem of the borrowed jumper to press against his cock.

"God, what I'd do with two Merlins," Harry says hungrily against Eggsy's neck, still mouthing inelegant wet kisses to his pulse, and Eggsy laughs in a way that makes his throat quiver, fingers slipping into the back of Harry's hair to hold him where he is.

"Not this," Eggsy says, still in Merlin's voice, as he takes Harry's hand and urges it into the waistband of his horrible cut-off trackies. "You know this isn't what I like, sir. Except when I do."

That's it, Merlin realises - he _gets it_. He's so like Harry in a million ways, mannerisms and suits and hair and everything, such a perfect clone of Harry at the same age that sometimes Merlin meets him in the HQ corridors and feels nauseated with déjà-vu. But he watches people like Merlin does, with a natural eye for tiny details that even Harry doesn't quite have unless he makes a dedicated effort. He's been watching Merlin this whole time, learning him just as thoroughly as Merlin's been learning him, and with Harry's hand on his cock and Harry's mouth sucking a livid bruise onto his neck Eggsy catches Merlin's eye, dropping him a wink and an easy, charming grin as if to confirm it: _I see you. I know you._

"Don't make me kneel on these floorboards at my age," Harry's muttering between his kisses and bites. "Come to bed, Eggsy."

He drops his impression when he hears his name and tilts Harry's face up, kissing him roughly until Harry's making stunned, beautiful little noises into his mouth. "Merlin's coming too," Eggsy tells him, and Harry looks over to Merlin's armchair, hair wild and cheeks flushed, dimples appearing to bracket his smile when his eyes trace downward and stop, lingering, on the way Merlin's cock is distending his trousers.

"Well, naturally, that goes without saying."

It's all a hot heap of limbs when they get upstairs; it's rare that Merlin joins them like this and the bed isn't really big enough to fit them all comfortably, though there's always something urgent and lovely about the forced closeness. He strips his jumper back off Eggsy's body, taking his t-shirt with it, and throws it across the room at the armchair he usually sits in to watch the other two grope and kiss like infatuated teenagers. One of the others, perhaps both of them together, unbuttons Merlin's shirt and that vanishes as well, falling in crumples to the floor, then there are mouths fucking _everywhere_ , on his own and on his chest, licking along the lines of his collarbones and down the streak of hair below his navel.

"Alright?" Eggsy checks, voice as soft as his eyes when his head joins Merlin's on the pillow, and a kiss is as good an answer as any. Merlin slides his fingers into Eggsy's sweaty hair and holds him close, sucking gently on his lower lip the way he always used to do to Harry when they were learning one another so many years ago. Eggsy shivers at it, laughing muffled and breathless into Merlin's mouth. He traces his thumb over the lines of Merlin's cheekbone and jaw, as though he's poised to clutch him by the face and hold him steady if he thinks about backing away. "I'll do Harry as well if you like. What'd you do with two Harrys?"

"Die of an instant heart attack, I expect," Harry says cheekily from halfway down the bed, yanking Eggsy's shorts off him and fumbling to unfasten Merlin's trousers.

"Get that in your mouth and shut up," Eggsy tells him, jabbing him in the chin with the wet tip of his cock. "Let the grown-ups talk." Not that anyone can hold anything even approaching a decent conversation with Harry Hart's mouth on them; soon Merlin's shuddering and gasping just as much as Eggsy is, Harry's bowed head moving between the cock in each hand and sucking with extravagant fervour.

"I want two Harrys about as much as he wants two Merlins." He's speaking so quietly and so close that Eggsy can probably feel the words more than hear them; either way he understands, and shifts on the pillow until his forehead's touching Merlin's temple.

"Yeah, I know." He really does know; Merlin can hear it in his voice, soft and marvelling. "Harry, come here a minute."

"Darling?" Harry says, a _what's wrong_ hidden in the word when he shuffles up the bed to trap Eggsy's body between Merlin's and his own, and Eggsy twists to kiss him, a hungry little sound swallowed away by Harry's mouth.

"Nothing, you were just gonna make me come."

"That is rather the point," Harry reminds him, and Eggsy gently bites the finger tracing the outline of his lips.

"Not yet. Can you pass the lube? I think it's in the drawer your side." Then, not quite looking at either of them, he haltingly says, "Merlin? Not inside. Just, you know."

It's the third time in two weeks he's initiated this, once with Harry, twice now with Merlin. Harry was asleep last time; now he watches completely enraptured like he's having some kind of holy vision, barely breathing while Merlin wets his cock and pushes it between Eggsy's clenched thighs.

"Good boy," he murmurs against the back of Eggsy's ear, because that's the kind of thing he seems to like to hear when he's unsure of himself. It makes Eggsy let out his breath in a shaky sigh and dart forward to kiss Harry again with the sort of fury usually reserved for the times they're reunited after days or weeks apart at opposite ends of the world. Merlin watches them for a while over Eggsy's shoulder, fucking between his thighs from behind slowly, steadily, with his fingertips trailing shivering lines up and down Eggsy's muscled belly just above where Harry's started stroking his cock again. "Tell me if it's too much."

"Yeah, it ain't, it's - nice." He sounds awkward, laughs a bit self-consciously, and tries again. "Better than nice. I like doing this."

"Then we needn't ever do anything else," Harry says, low and serene like a hypnotist. Merlin feels the shift of him moving, then the careful rub of Harry's fingers against the head of his cock the next time it slips through the hot clench of Eggsy's legs. It rushes through Merlin like a lick of fire, raising goosebumps along his arms and the back of his neck, and something of it must transfer to the way he's fucking Eggsy's thighs because Eggsy sags against him, breathing hard, tilting his head back for a messy, inept kiss.

"Go down," he says too shaky to be as commanding as Merlin thinks he means to be. "Harry - Harry, go down, I'm gonna come."

When it happens it's deep in Harry's mouth, Eggsy's hand and Merlin's both tangled hard in Harry's hair and holding him there. He's not even undressed, dishevelled and gazing up the bed at both of them with hearts in his eyes and white dribbles of come spilling from the corner of his lips. The sight of him - and a ripple of déjà-vu flashbacks again: Harry in the middle of the 80s, Eggsy on his knees for Harry once in a hotel room in Thailand - makes Merlin print a neat purple circle of teeth marks in the back of Eggsy's shoulder when he follows, silent and trembling, pulsing between the slick glide of his thighs.

"You jizzed in your kecks, didn't you?" Eggsy says after a minute through a wide yawn, and Harry doesn't even bother pretending he didn't, hauling himself up entirely without shame to strip off his clothes and mop his crotch down halfheartedly with his underwear before finding a pair of pyjama bottoms to pull on.

"Give me those," Merlin says, and catches Harry's boxers out of the air when Harry throws them so he can start wiping the mess of lube and come from inside Eggsy's thighs. "Suppose I can't bully you into a shower."

"Nope," Eggsy agrees, wriggling happily back against him.

"Or dry sheets."

"Nope again."

"Then you're on laundry duty in the morning."

"Fair enough, yeah."

The bed lurches when Harry gets back in on Eggsy's other side, fussing the mangled covers flat and drawing them up over their bodies. It's already too hot, far too crowded. More often than not Merlin excuses himself once it's time to sleep and heads into the other room, leaves the two of them entwined and kissing sleepily and sharing the same lungfuls of air - but tonight Harry says _stay_ and Eggsy says _please_ and Merlin is exactly where he wants to be.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's heart stops beating while Merlin's visiting the Kingsman kennels, and the forty-seven seconds it takes him to run back to the house from there feels like eternity.

Harry's heart stops beating while Merlin's visiting the Kingsman kennels, and the forty-seven seconds it takes him to run back to the house from there feels like eternity.

When he flings himself into the chair of the first empty workstation he finds, he has to catch hold of the edge of the desk so he doesn't go wheeling sideways across the room. It's another few seconds to log in, fingers moving lightning-fast over the keys, then he brings up Harry's mission folder - and he's fine. Vitals good, live glasses footage showing the aftermath of a fight and Harry's hand coming into view to reach into a corpse's pocket to retrieve his phone. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED flashes brightly in big red letters across the full width of the video.

Harry's handler noticed Merlin's login, of course, and types _Merlin, are you taking over?_ into a new text box in the corner of the screen.

Merlin wipes his hand across his face, feeling suddenly both incredibly stupid and wrung out like a dishcloth. _No_ , he replies, _mistyped, I meant to log in to Lancelot's._

_You've been on duty nineteen hours. GO HOME. (Sir.)_

_I'll be here a while longer. Please send Galahad to find me when he's back, I need to speak with him._

He does manage to sleep a bit, but it's fitful and unsatisfying; when he wakes at the noise of the suite door opening, he feels even more tired than he did before he dropped off. Harry looks exhausted too, but it sits far more comfortably on him than Merlin: he looks relaxed and peaceful the way he only ever does after a really good fight or fuck, moving quietly around the bedroom in the soft light of the dimmed lamp and replacing his suit with an oversized Kano t-shirt Eggsy left here last time he spent the night before he comes over to sit on the bed.

When Merlin's finished struggling to shake off the last remnants of sleep and sit up, Harry tips his chin up with a couple of fingertips and kisses him softly on the lips. "Martha said you're overworking yourself," he says.

"Martha needs to mind her own business."

Harry knows him better than anyone in the world. It takes no time and no discussion for him to understand something's wrong simply by the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes, and he sits there for a moment with his head slightly cocked, waiting - as always - for Merlin to decide whether it's something that needs to be talked about immediately or turned over in the privacy of his own head for a while longer.

"Get your PJs on," Harry says eventually, drawing the covers back and fussing at the hem of Merlin's jumper until he submits to being undressed. He does it carefully, slowly folding Merlin's jumper and hanging his shirt and trousers to give him a minute longer, then coming back over the room with a t-shirt for him to wear with his boxers. "I'm going to have a shower, then..."

He trails off at the insistent, clingy touch of Merlin's fingers curling around his wrist.

"Alright," Harry says softly, his handsome face creasing into that familiar, beautiful smile. "Move over, let me in."

He winces a bit as he's getting under the covers when he rests his weight on his other hand. As soon as he's settled, Merlin reaches for that one instead and carefully traces his fingers over the tender swelling and the blue ghost of veins inside Harry's wrist, finding the site of the implant he injected there the day they were married. "Did you get a knock here?"

Harry's face turns sour for a moment before he smooths it out again. "Walloped my gun out of my hand with a bloody pipe. I've had it x-rayed, it's not broken, but I'm afraid if you're after a pull tonight it's going to have to be a fumble with the left."

"Your implant's damaged. It's stopped sending your pulse signal to my pendant."

"Well, that's just"--then Harry stops short, a stricken look flickering over his face before he buries it in Merlin's neck, ignoring the pain in his wrist to draw him closer and cling to him like he's drowning. "Shit," he mutters, and he sounds so distressed that Merlin almost wants to laugh despite everything.

He reaches for Harry, gently stroking his fingertips through the neatly cropped hair at the back of his head. "I shouldn't have been so wound up by it, there's a million reasons why it might stop working. Dodgy battery in the pendant, anything. It's just..."

_It's the first time I've been afraid for you since Kentucky_ goes unsaid, because it doesn't need to be said. Harry kisses him softly again on his beating pulse, Merlin goes on stroking his hair, and soon the silence turns to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So," Harry said when he rolled up his shirt sleeve to let Merlin inject the replacement implant. "Is that a spare one in case I get my arm bashed in again, or are you trying to find the courage to offer it to a certain someone else?"
> 
> Merlin glanced at the second copy he'd made, sitting on his desk in a shiny steel case that in some other universe might be a ludicrous velvet ring box. "Haven't decided yet."
> 
> "Yes you have," Harry said with a full-force, brilliant smile.

Eggsy has this remarkable habit of lounging about the house in the absolute smallest amount of fabric he can decently wear. Merlin thought for a long time it was for Harry's benefit, Eggsy understanding all too well what it took to light sparks in the parts of Harry's brain that compelled him to get his greedy mouth on the nearest barely-dressed cock and suck the life out of it. Now they've been living together for a while, he thinks it's more to do with Eggsy waiting with knife-edge anticipation to be looked after.

"Your knob's going to turn into an icicle," Merlin says from his armchair, looking at Eggsy over the top of his tablet. "I won't have you upsetting Harry like that."

Eggsy laughs and stretches his whole body, wanton and beautiful. He's on his front on the bed, feet on the pillows, idly poking through Netflix on the wall-mounted telly and wearing nothing but his underpants, though he drops the remote when Merlin speaks and turns onto his side to pose extravagantly with a grin on his ridiculous, perfect face.

"You wanna come and warm me up?"

"You think my department runs itself? I've got a thousand things I need to sign off."

"Suit yourself." Eggsy sounds unbothered but he grins widely again, delighted and pink in the cheeks, when Merlin gets up to dump a blanket on his almost-naked body before returning to his work. "Thanks," he says softly, seeming impossibly, beautifully touched by the gesture, and snuggles the blanket closer around his shoulders when he returns to his Netflix quest.

He's halfway through some Jason Statham nonsense when Harry calls, and pauses the film to answer. "Hey, Harry - oh, _now_ you're interested," he says to Merlin when he comes to sit on the edge of the bed with him, his fake-hurt spoiled by the brimming amusement in his voice. He tilts his phone, getting Merlin in the FaceTime view as well, and says to Harry, "He's working too hard again. You got any tips for getting him to chill out?"

In his Manhattan hotel halfway around the world, Harry's got that calculated innocent look on his face that never fools anyone. "I always found he becomes a lot less highly-strung after he's been waving a flogger or something around for an hour."

"Uh, yeah, never mind, then. Leave you something to look forward to when you get home."

Merlin slips a hand under the blanket and trails his first two fingertips very gently up the length of Eggsy's spine, from his barely-there pants to the nape of his neck. On the little screen, shaking now in Eggsy's wobbly hand, Harry looks vaguely dazed as though he's the one being touched, and he wets his lips with a quick swipe of his tongue before he speaks again.

"I was wondering, Merlin, if you might arrange some company for me tonight."

"Of course." He stops moving, hand resting almost motionless at the back of Eggsy's neck except for the gentle slide of his thumb stroking little circles across his goosebumped skin. "In the mood for anything in particular?"

"Nothing fancy. You choose."

"Can I?" Eggsy says suddenly. He's looking at Harry but he's speaking to both of them, fingers pressing almost painfully into the flesh of Merlin's knee. "Is that alright? Can I pick for you?"

Twice now since his meltdown over Harry fucking sex workers, Eggsy's watched Merlin browsing their favourite escort sites with curiosity and a rising hunger in his eyes. The misunderstanding and careful talks about it all seem to have worked something loose in him and there's none of that bitter fury left, only the same fascination he seems to feel about all of Harry's other trysts. "Harry?" Merlin prompts, leaving the decision entirely up to him, and Harry studies them both in his phone screen for a long time before a crooked smile begins to tug at the corner of his mouth.

"Please. I would love you to, if you want to."

Almost an hour later, Merlin's tablet chirps when Harry connects. "Alright?" he checks out loud, swiping his work away to bring up Harry's glasses feed: he's in front of the mirror in his hotel bathroom, impeccable in his best navy suit but looking extremely warm in the face, and also slightly perturbed.

"Eggsy sent Joshua," he signs to his reflection, presumably so he won't be overheard through the door. "Did he mean to do that?"

"I think Eggsy's better than doing a thing he doesn't mean," Merlin says thoughtfully, regarding Eggsy across the room and watching him react to the sound of his name: he smiles slowly and pauses his film, turning onto his side to regard Merlin right back.

"Sounds about right to me," Eggsy says. "Does Harry like his present?"

"What's your game?" Merlin asks, curious, trying to read something in the gleam of his eyes.

Eggsy shrugs, dislodging the blanket from his bare shoulder. "No game. Harry likes this bloke. I'm done being a dickhead about it. Just wanted him to know."

"Did you hear that?" Merlin asks Harry, and on the other side of the ocean Harry's reflection looks thunderstruck before softening into something dopey and sweet, the expression he so often wears when Eggsy's asleep and snoring in his arms or dancing around the kitchen singing along to some embarrassing pop song on the radio while he's making scrambled eggs in the morning.

"Thank him for me," Harry says, and goes back into the bedroom.

For the second time tonight, Merlin sets his tablet aside and goes to join Eggsy on the bed, but this time he sits back against the pillows and waits for Eggsy to turn around eagerly under his blanket and crawl up the bed to snuggle into the warmth of Merlin's body. "Are you certain you're okay with this?" Merlin asks, pressing the words in a fumble of kisses to Eggsy's temple, and feels the motion of Eggsy's nod against his mouth.

"Reckon my head's always gonna be a mess to some extent. But not about this, not any more."

He wants to be kissed so badly. Merlin can sense the longing in him like it's made of creeping invisible fingers drawing him closer, and the willingness he feels in himself to submit to the pull is exciting in a weird, wondrous, borderline frightening sort of way; he's never felt it with anybody but Harry before and the novelty of it all is a lot to process. But this is what he's always been good at - processing, learning things, figuring out what's needed and making it happen - so he draws Eggsy closer with both hands gently cradling his face, and kisses him with the same sort of tenderness he always gets from Harry.

"Fuck," Eggsy mumbles when he finally draws back for breath. He's got a handful of Merlin's t-shirt scrunched between his fingers and when he realises he hurriedly lets it go, smoothing the creases down over Merlin's chest with the flat of his hand.

Merlin's slowly becoming used to the way these stars in Eggsy's eyes are his now as well when they were only ever Harry's before; this, too, is taking a while to sink in. He coaxes Eggsy back to him with a hand in his hair and kisses him again, soft and slow, sucking on his lip in a way that makes Eggsy lose a starving little sob-like sound out of his nose and kiss back fiercely as though it's the very first time they've touched.

"Can we watch?" he asks between kisses.

Merlin taps his glasses to connect to Harry's and his earpiece. It's a funny angle: Harry's glasses are discarded crookedly on the bedside table so the view of him on his back on the bed under Joshua's body is disorientingly upside-down. He sees Harry react to the chirping sound of the connection and reach for his glasses, slipping them on and giving Merlin a view of Joshua's handsome face: designer stubble and vivid blue eyes and _cheekbones_. "Harry, would he wear your glasses? Disable the incoming view first. Put your spare pair on yourself."

Harry's silent for a moment, then there's the lurch of his glasses moving again and Harry's face comes into view, all wet lips and the pink scuff of stubble burn and messy, grabbed at hair. "Mark wants you to wear these," he says as he's finding another pair in the drawer for himself.

Merlin can hear Joshua laughing, good-natured and baffled, but it's not the weirdest request he's ever heard, not by far, and he's had enough encounters with Harry over the last decade to be comfortable with more or less anything. "Why?"

"Humour a pining old man. You know he tips well."

"Okay, sure." He settles them more securely on his face, and Merlin sees Harry grin up at him: at Joshua, but at _him_. "These are the video recorder glasses, right?"

"You know far too much about my private business."

"Did he fucking blab about Kingsman secrets?" Eggsy asks, sounding scandalised until Merlin kisses him again, shushing him, and leans over to the bedside table to reach for Eggsy's glasses.

"Harry's got some cover story that I'm an inventor. It's not really a lie." Merlin sends his own view to Harry's glasses, then slips Eggsy's onto his own face for a moment to fix the settings and hands them over. "How's the view?"

Eggsy's grin is immediate and dazzling. "Hey, Harry."

"Darling," Harry murmurs, sounding vaguely stunned at his good fortune.

"Kiss him."

Harry does, and at the same time Eggsy wriggles out of his blanket and shifts onto his back, pulling Merlin to half-cover his body and kissing him as though he's Harry; the glasses are a transatlantic conduit, and Harry's heart is throbbing in the pendant pressed between their chests as if he's there in the room with them.

"Merlin, you're a fucking genius," Eggsy says against his mouth, scrambling to grab the hem of his t-shirt and get it off him.

For a long time that's all there is, a curious sort of almost-four-way kissing interrupted only by Eggsy's frustrated noises as he tries to get Merlin's trousers off him. Merlin pauses for just a moment to tap at his tablet and bring up a landscape split screen of their glasses view - Harry's face on the left through Joshua's glasses, Eggsy's face on the right through Merlin's - then props the tablet against the lamp on the bedside table where he can see it. Eggsy's craning to see it too; he's starting to become as vain as Harry about getting to watch himself in bed, which Merlin will never in a million years complain about.

"Look at me," he commands gently anyway, because he gets the feeling Harry might do a bit of complaining himself if he's forced to go more than five seconds at a time without looking dreamily into Eggsy's eyes. "Look at Harry."

"Fuck," Eggsy mutters, doing as he's told. He wraps the fingers of one hand tight around the bedstead bars as though he needs an anchor and tips his chin down in a way Merlin is fairly sure he learned from Harry: it makes the line of his jaw and cheekbones look even sharper than usual, and his eyes are huge and bright in the lamplight. "Harry. Swap. Get on top of him, yeah? Kiss me."

"Tell me," they hear Harry say, or sigh, half-lost around Joshua's tongue. For his part, Joshua seems fully aware that he's become some kind of proxy now and doesn't answer, just quietly laughs and goes along with Harry flipping him onto his back; like Merlin said, it's not the strangest thing he's done with Harry by a long shot. "What do you need? Tell me what you want."

Eggsy's cock is so hard now that Merlin can feel the head of it poking wetly out the top of his pants when he slides a hand in between their bodies. He writhes at the touch, hissing and swearing, and gasps, "Put your fingers in him."

Merlin peels Eggsy's underwear down, cotton dragging slowly on his sweat-damp thighs. "Eggsy," he says quietly, just to check, and Eggsy nods.

"In me," he says. The words wobble in his mouth. He swallows hard and tries again, more sure of himself, steady and deliberate. "Harry. Gimme your fingers."

Merlin takes it slow, far more slowly than he thinks Harry would have the patience for; after almost five minutes of touching his wet fingertips to Eggsy's hole but never pressing in properly, Eggsy finally exclaims, "Fucksake!" and grabs Merlin's wrist, directing the tip of his first finger insistently inside. "I ain't new to this, you know, I done this fifteen billion times."

"I know," Merlin says, soft and soothing, the same tone he uses when Harry's high on the tsunami of chemicals in his brain after taking a whipping or a shining steel blade. "Tell Harry how he feels in you."

" _Fuck_ ," Eggsy whines again. He's got both hands tight around the bedstead bars now, muscles visibly tightening and releasing in his forearms as Merlin gently twists his fingertip a fraction, stroking the hot soft clench of his insides. "Fuck, _big_ , even just this feels like a fucking redwood."

In Manhattan, fingering a man Eggsy's never met, Harry laughs breathlessly. His glasses keep slipping down the sweat on his nose and he keeps flicking them back into place with a practised jerk of his head. "Another?"

"Yeah." He hides his face against the white skin inside his raised arm at the push of a second fingertip, breath staggering wetly out of his mouth. "Harry."

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah. I love you. Wish you was here."

 _He is_ , Merlin wants to tell him, but there's no way he can think of to word it that doesn't sound silly and corny - besides, Eggsy's already perfectly aware of that himself, and when a long time later Merlin fits his cock inside him for the first time just as Harry starts fucking Joshua, Eggsy reaches for the heartbeat pendant dangling between their chests on its chain around Merlin's neck and holds it to his mouth so he can feel the thrumming beats pulse against his lips.

( _"So," Harry said when he rolled up his shirt sleeve to let Merlin inject the replacement implant. "Is that a spare one in case I get my arm bashed in again, or are you trying to find the courage to offer it to a certain someone else?"_

_Merlin glanced at the second copy he'd made, sitting on his desk in a shiny steel case that in some other universe might be a ludicrous velvet ring box. "Haven't decided yet."_

_"Yes you have," Harry said with a full-force, brilliant smile._ )

He can feel Eggsy's hand on his back, the slide of fingers moving down to clutch desperately at his arse trying to urge him on, and clumsily kisses the pendant. It's trapped between their mouths, throbbing hard with Harry's excited heartbeat, the vibrations of it making Merlin's lips feel hot and numb like he's been kissing them both for hours.

He could have found a better way of saying it, really, but it feels like a strange, spontaneous confession that perhaps never could have happened any way but this. "I want yours too," Merlin says, a low, shuddering whisper pressed against Eggsy's cheek. "I want your heart."

In Manhattan, Harry comes inside Joshua with a trembling, stifled little cry, which kind of breaks the game they've fallen into - but Eggsy is staring up at Merlin with his eyes wide, startled and awestruck, and he's not too far behind.


End file.
